When large weather events cause widespread outages, Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative has a coordinated system in place to respond.
The cooperative is ready to put the process in motion if Sunday’s forecasted snow brings power outages.
For SVEC members, the procedure begins by reporting outages. From there, a 24-hour Operations Center routes crews to find the source of an issue, keeping safety at the forefront of restoration efforts.
During these large-scale events, a common set of questions often arise.
In what order does SVEC seek to restore service?
Restoration efforts seek to get the most members back on as possible, first determining if a problem is at a substation level and then working as far down line as necessary to capture everyone affected. An issue could be a considerable distance from someone’s house, which might explain why a member sees an SVEC bucket drive by but not stop.
“There’s no reason to start at an individual home’s tap line, all the way on the end, get a tree off the line, if we can’t energize the line anyway,” SVEC Systems Operator Taylor Fulk says. “We’ve got to start at the source and work our way out, bringing power up along with it.”
When is the estimated time for restoration?
Given the number of outages crews could be working during a large-scale event, it is difficult to provide each member with an estimate for restoration. Typically, when these times are available, the online outage map will indicate an estimate. During widespread occasions, these times might not be immediately available. Crews will work as quickly and safely as possible.
“Estimated times change. We can’t give an estimated time without finding the cause and knowing what it takes to fix it,” Fulk says. “We’ll see what we have. Considering accessibility to poles and lines, snow can make it a problem for us to repair outages, but we do our best.”
How – and why – should members report each outage?
It’s important for SVEC to know about every outage situation, to verify the scope of the issue. Members should report outages online in the Outage Center of svec.coop, over the MySVEC app or by calling 1-800-234-7832.
“Never assume your neighbor reported your outage for you,” Fulk says. “All information is good information, and we need all that information. That could potentially help us shrink an outage time and get members back on quicker.”
For more information on outage restoration and SVEC’s storm preparations, visit svec.coop.
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